Sandpiper: May - July 2020

JULY 2020 | SANDP I PER 12 John Joseph Madigan (1966-2020) died aged 53 in Hepburn Springs last month. Madigan served in the Australian Senate representing Victoria from 2011-2016, initially as a member of the revived Democratic Labor Party. Madigan was a man of strong faith and a career blacksmith who cut a saintly character in the halls of power in Canberra, with more in common with a Franciscan Friar, than a suit from Spring Street. Distinguished by his strength of character, Madigan’s personal and professional humility were renowned. Softly spoken, he never hesitated to speak up for the downtrodden and neglected. Of modest means, he donated what he could to those who needed it more, such as in his widely applauded donation of the parliamentary payrise in 2013 to Daylesford Secondary College and supporting Exodus House, a shelter for the homeless and underprivileged. It was recounted in his eulogy that these virtues continued outside the public eye. A striking example was when his relative Sue Dominguez brought an asylum seeker’s plight to his attention, Madigan responded by visiting and personally providing two week’s groceries for this mother and her children from a local supermarket. Madigan is survived by wife Teresa, and children Lucy and Jack. priest who was better than I was, but didn’t seem to know it — a man full of graces of the heart, the mind, and the spirit; a lovable man. He will rise. He will be a bishop some day. Later an Archbishop. Later a Cardinal. Finally an Archangel, I hope. And then he will recall me when I say, “Do you remember that trip we made from Ballarat to Bendigo, when you were nothing but Father C, and I was nothing to what I am now?” It has actually taken nine hours to come from Ballarat to Bendigo. We could have saved seven by walking. However, there was no hurry.” Twain was a complicated man and typical 19th century wit. As a Presbyterian from Missouri, he was raised to be deeply suspicious of Catholicism. However, he was captivated by St Joan of Arc and considered his last novel, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc , to be his greatest work. 125th anniversary of novelist’s visit Vale John Madigan, Victorian Catholic senator MARK Twain, the famous author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn visited Bendigo 125 years ago, on a lecture tour of the British Empire. Twain had these kind and light- hearted words to share about a Catholic priest he met on the way in his travelogue, Following the Equator : “ON the rail again — bound for Bendigo. From diary: October ‘23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of the rich gold-fields of the early days; waited several hours for a train; left at 3.40 and reached Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic